On Chesil Beach

     And she loved Edward, not with the hot, moist passion she had read about, but warmly, deeply, sometimes like a daughter, sometimes almost maternally. ... She thought he was original, unlike anyone she had ever met. He always had a paper back book, usually history, in his jacket pocket in case he found himself in a queue or a waiting room. He marked what he read with a pencil stub. He was virtually the only man Florence had met who did not smoke. None of his socks matched. He had only one tie, narrow, knitted, dark blue, which he wore nearly all the time with a white shirt.

Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach

Suddenly remembered this passage today. (I had to pull out my journal and flip to August 24, 2009 to find it.) I don't know how it struck me. Must have been something about Edward's originality, something about his tie. Yes, most likely his tie. 

I would ask my mom, What made you fall in love with daddy? And she would say, He's, you know, kind. Yes, mom, I know already daddy's kind. What else? And the else was what I've tried to find, in people and in characters. It's just that Florence found it first in Edward.